Chasing Gannets

Here’s another shot from the sardine run, from fellow photographer Dudley Kelbe.

The Gannets are the ones that show the divers where to go, the boats charge across the rough seas in the same direction as the Gannets all hoping to be the first to the scene.

They are amazing creatures, when they start diving into the water en masse, it’s like watching a rolling wave pound the water over and over again. In the water they can go as deep as 10 metres, they don’t necessarily get fish as they hit the water, they also swim around after them, it’s a slightly less graceful look, and get called swimming chickens cause of it.

When diving with the gannets for the first time you get a bit of shock, the noise they make as they hit the water is like a shotgun going off not too far away. It’s even more impressive when they are hitting the water in big numbers it’s like a warzone, the whole experience of diving a bait ball is a bit like that actually.